Xu Bing: Writing Between Heaven and Earth opens on Saturday, February 21 at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU. Acclaimed worldwide for propelling contemporary Chinese art onto the global stage with his epic installations, Xu Bing has been invited from Beijing to Miami to present a lecture on February 21st from 4:00-5:00 p.m. and the opening reception from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public. The artist's lecture is at the University's Graham Center GC140 (seating is expected to fill quickly, registration in advance is recommended to artinfo@fiu.edu).
The exhibition encompasses 5,000 square feet and features the artist's iconic installations plus newer artworks that provoke viewers to challenge their perceptions of cultural identity and language, including a never-before seen artwork that Xu Bing is creating specifically for this exhibition at the Frost Art Museum (through May 24 at 10975 S.W. 17 Street, Miami, FL 33199 - link to map/directions and hours).Due to its massive scope and size, only a handful of museums in the world have shown the complete Book from the Sky including all of the hundreds of original components and handmade carvings, which took the artist four years to complete. "This exhibition crowns the Frost Art Museum's triumvirate series Three Giants of Contemporary Chinese Art," adds Dr. Pomeroy, "which began last summer with Simon Ma, continued through Art Basel season with Wang Qingsong, and culminates now with Xu Bing - one of the world's most acclaimed Chinese artists."
This exhibition brings together Xu Bing's Shu-related masterpieces to demonstrate the art of writing as image. The character Shu (?) in ancient Chinese signifies books, written characters and the act of writing.
... running chat software that lures visitors to simultaneously decode universal signs
and symbols ...
Square Word Calligraphy Classroom is constructed as a classroom with an instructional video, model books, ink, brushes, brush-stands, and blackboard with the creation of a one-of-a-kind writing system that transforms English into Chinese ...
... viewers will personally experience Square Word Calligraphy Classroom (by using traditional calligraphy brushes and ink) and will see how Chinese students learn to write Chinese characters by tracing ...
... but with Xu Bing's clever twist: these characters also turn out to be comprised of English letters ...
Another section of the exhibition presents the artist's Suzhou Landscripts which at first glance appear to be traditional Chinese landscape paintings ...
... but upon closer inspection reveal Chinese logographic script writing, in which the water is composed of the word for water and the mountains are composed of the word for mountain ...
More about Xu Bing - The artist's trajectory includes periods of banishment and re-acceptance by the Chinese. He became famous in China and internationally during the 1980s with his landmark installation Book from the Sky, which revealed how the written word can be turned into propaganda and rendered meaningless. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, his work was deemed too controversial and the artist moved to the U.S. the following year.
The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University opened its current 46,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art building in November 2008. Admission to the Museum is always free. The Frost is an American Alliance of Museums accredited museum and Smithsonian Affiliate, and is located at 10975 SW 17th Street, across from the Blue Garage and adjacent to the Wertheim Performing Arts Center on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus. Hours of operation are Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sunday noon-5 p.m. Closed on Mondays and most legal holidays. For more information, visit thefrost.fiu.edu or call 305-348-2890, or follow on Twitter: twitter.com/frostartmuseum or Facebook: facebook.com/frostartmuseum.
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